DJ Gius

Although I'd been aware of him for some time, and had a few tracks and remixes credited to DJ Gius, I hadn't really delved very far into his catalog.  First off, of course, DJ Gius is Christiano Giusberti, better known as Technoboy, and one of the superstars of Italian hardstyle.  Some of the earlier DJ Gius tracks and remixes were hard trance, so I had assumed that he'd kept the two names separate to separate the styles.  However, this isn't really true.  Some later DJ Gius tracks, like "Jerk It!" and anything later are indistinguishable in style from a Technoboy song of the same vintage.

Meanwhile, some of his slightly earlier tracks like "Puffganger" and "Mega What" bridge the gap between hard trance and hardstyle, and would fit very well in a set with either as needed.  And some of his really early work under the DJ Gius name, like "Overcharge" and a few others (maybe) are usually considered hard house.  Although that highlights how similar all of these genres are to each other in the first place, and I tend to like some of the stuff that slides a bit out of its genre "swim lane" and picks up some influences from the next lane over quite often.  I guess I reject the notion that genre purity is an important thing. (This may be part of the reason why I enjoy stuff by Guyver or Lee Haslam, for instance, which brings a UK Hard House vibe to their hard trance—when they're not overtly actually making hard house.) (Of course, I also don't like house as much as I like trance, and some of the hard house stuff sounds cheesy to me when there's too much of it.  But I otherwise like the variety of some hard house elements in my hard trance.)

Anyway, my favorite DJ Gius songs tend to be the ones that are hard trance, but which have enough hardstyle-like elements that you could slip them into a hardstyle set and they wouldn't really feel all that out of place or weird, but not the ones that are so overtly hardstyle that I just consider them (in my own mind, at least) like a Technoboy song.  Here's a small sampling.